The Wonders of Corrugated Cardboard
by Jhomeboy
Summary: In an unsettled dream, Calvin is told he will have wealth, friendship, the warning "caveat emptor," and death. After they begin to come true, Calvin must somehow beat death before his final hours scroll down. Kinda weird...
1. Midnight Encounter

I was sitting here, writing my latest short for a publisher (called "Suave Paranoia." Be sure to check local booksellers on the date of-oh, right, the story.) when I suddenly found myself staring at my little laptop, and started thinking of the corrugated cardboard box it came in, and then thought of who else liked cardboard boxes. I mainly wanted to write this because my last story was a bust. Toward the end, the story takes the form of _Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me _a little, but only a little. Please, enjoy.

The envelope of darkness was a thick one, blanketing the room, suffocating those inside. A certain tiger lay on his back, his fore and aft legs twitching to the ceiling, as if in a midnight chase, maybe to find that lost explorer, or maybe it is a chase to beat the Devil. The unsettled boy next to him, however, had different subconscious wonders that night. 

It was not a nightmare of monsters, nor one of terrible beasts that roamed the Earth millions of years ago. It is of the future, more specifically, _his _future. 

Calvin was sitting in a dark that was deeper than his room. Somehow, he knew this was only a subconscious conjuring, but something was nagging at him. Something told him that if he died in this world, he would die in the real world.

Calvin first noticed something wrong when he found himself sitting in a nondescript chair. He frowned slightly and twisted to look over the chair. When he came back up, there was a table before him. It hovered over the nonexistent ground, but by only an inch or so. It would go no higher. 

On the table was a deck of cards, and Calvin knew that whoever's they were, he didn't want to play Go Fish. The cards were marked on the back with a skull with a sword penetrating through the top left and a trail of blood leaking from the right. 

__

Those are Tarot Cards. he realized simultaneous when he realized he was not alone. 

A light seemed to fill the space around him, and yet the deep penetrating darkness remained. Calvin shivered, and in the real world did the same. The person across the table was hooded, he could see, with a cloak that was two times too big for him. Something dark and crimson dripped from the chest. Calvin peered forward a little and discovered why: a dagger was thrust deep into the mysterious person's heart. Calvin choked back a scream.

He finally did scream when a hand reached out and grabbed the Tarot Cards. The hand was a pearl white. The bones creaked and dust puffed out from the joints as they closed around the deck and pulled them forward. 

Calvin shrunk against the chair, and discovered it had rapidly changed since he had last looked. Green felt cushioned his back and the feet resembled Gargoyle feet. Calvin started to ponder the transformation when the cloaked figure unveiled himself.

The skeleton was skeletal all over, apparently. The skull was that of the one on the Tarot Cards. Calvin uttered a cry and bent over the side of his chair to throw up into infinity and then maybe jump, but nothing came. 

The sword gleamed in the light cast by nothing, cast deep into the skull. The end point stuck out of the chin by about eight inches. Blood dripped from the eye socket along with the dagger-stabbed heart. That was the only sound, the monotonous dripping of blood that seemed to come from nowhere and never stopped.

"Calvin…" a voice echoed from inside somewhere. Calvin swallowed again and stood up straight, prepared to jump if he had to. 

The skeleton pulled from middle of the deck and placed it with its front down on the table. A second, third, and fourth soon followed. 

"This, Calvin, is your future." 

The first card was revealed. It showed a gold coin that Calvin had never seen before. It seemed to have the picture of a skeleton on one side. Like a holographic baseball card, the picture flipped to show the opposite side of the coin, which was a blood stained dagger.

"Wealth." echoed the skeleton and pulled over the second card.

This card was the picture of Hobbes and appeared to be leaping forward. "Friendship."

The third was an image of a computer. On the screen was eBay.com, specifically at the bottom of the page. The last two items for bid were shown at the top (both which read "Death is Coming! Death is Coming!") but what really caught Calvin's attention was the warning at the bottom in Latin. "Caveat Emptor…" bellowed the skeleton. "Let the Buyer Beware."

The fourth card was flipped over and Calvin tried not to scream or hurl again. It showed a picture of the skeleton, sword through the head, dagger in the heart.

"Death." said the skeleton in a flat voice. "Death. Death is coming, Calvin. Death is coming."

Then it happened, exactly what Calvin was expecting to happen. The cloak disappeared and the skeleton popped forward. Albeit he could see the steel blade sunken in the left eye socket two inches back, an eyeball out of nowhere started to bug out with jet black iris, and ditto with the right. 

"Death is coming, Calvin! I'm coming to get you! I'm coming to get you! I'll get you! I'll-"

* ** *

"-get you if that's the last thing I do." Calvin uttered a cry and sat straight up, sending a crack up his spine. He breathed in deeply. In his head, the skeleton's words still rang.

In fact, they were below and to the left of him.

Calvin looked down reluctantly, expecting to see the skeleton, lying down where Hobbes should be, resting and yet staring into Calving with the bug eyes. 

However, it was just Hobbes, on his back and his legs twitching. Calvin let loose a heavy sigh as he realized it had only been his friend uttering the words.

"Zzzz…I'll get you…if it's the last thing I do…zzzz…" Calving patted his friend on the head and settled back down to his pillow.

Before Calvin settled back into untouched dreams, he noticed that his pillow was drenched, as if he had been sweating…

…or weeping bitterly. 


	2. Wealthy in the Woods

Installment two of "Wonder of Corrugated Cardboard." Hope you enjoy. 

Disclaimer: I don't own Calvin and Hobbes. I don't Calvin and Hobbes. I don't own Calvin and Hobbes. All work and no play make Jared a dull boy. All work and no play make Jared a dull boy. All work and no play make Jared a dull boy…

By morning, the nightmare was so much dust in the wind. He had literally forgotten about it as he had been jolted out of his sleep as his blankets were torn from him violently. A wave of coldness clung to Calvin's skin. He shivered and struggled into consciousness only by the large bulbs of gooseflesh that had broken out on his arms and legs. 

"Good morning, Sunshine!" came a distant voice in a dream. Calvin jerked right and his eyes jolted open at the sight. 

Hobbes seemed to be suspended in mid-air for the second he had seen him, and one thought flashed through his mind:

(_"Friendship," the skeleton had bellowed, holding a card of Hobbes_)

he was going to get crushed. He made a feeble attempt to cover his face. Hobbes crashed into the bed, his arms outstretched. Calvin pried his eyelids open and saw Hobbes' face hovering before him, a good-natured smile on his face. 

"God Hobbes…one would think you could find a more subtle way of waking me up." Hobbes shrugged and got off of the bed. "Who needs an alarm clock when you have friendship." 

Inside his mind, Calvin heard the word "friendship" reverb severely, making his temples pound as the information from the night before came rushing back in a flood of information. 

He uttered a tiny gasp as he realized that a card had come true. The first of the four had been predicted. Of course, he had friendship before the nightmare, and that didn't mean anything. _Mental Tarot cards don't predict a damn thing, _he reassured himself.

* ** *

He had gotten through the day without any mention of friendship (it helped that he didn't have many (or any) friends at all) nor the other three predictions. They had been…uh…

Calvin had forgotten, but it didn't matter, because it had just been a coincidence that morning, something simple that could easily have been forgotten. And that's what it had been…forgotten. 

If he could just get through the rest of his life without mention of

(_wealth_)

the other three predictions, he would be okay.

* ** *

"You see, the problem with today's youth is we have to be exciting every moment of our lives! We won't sit still for a minute if it doesn't have car chases, guns, sexual exploitation, or an explosion every five seconds." quipped Calvin. He turned his head forward again and quickly veered past a tree. The lower branches whipped through the air ahead of him. 

"That's why we can't tolerate anything less. You don't see kids drawing, say, a river in a forest, or a Presidential campaign for whatever reasons he would. Kids draw cars being hurled over cliffs all the while engulfed in flames. He will draw an entire crowd sprayed with gunfire before he draws anything that won't lead to an explosion. Action and adventure is what pleases us. It indulges our hunger for excitement. It-"

Calvin's last statement was cut short as the issue he had been discussing became art imitating life. The wagon's left front wheel crumbled and was thrown off into the woods, never to be seen again. The steering shaft snapped and the front axle disappeared into the soil. The wagon's front screeched and began to flip over. Calvin cried out and jumped up. Hobbes passed through his legs and Calvin landed on the back side, which now ran parallel to the ground. Calvin jumped up and off simultaneously with Hobbes as the back axle snapped and the final frame and carriage slammed into a tree trunk, chroming off of the side and over the ledge that, if not for the fatal crash, would have ended Calvin and his tiger's lives quickly. The frame had been turned into a twisted corpse.

Calvin sneezed and exhaled fresh soil and dust from his nose and struggled up. Hobbes was rubbing his head on the ground. He had leaped just in time, for he had found himself with his legs dangling over the side of the thirty-eight foot gap into the river below. If it had been last year, Calvin and Hobbes could have easily gone over and landed for a swim, but the water was down this year, and you would only go for a dip from the edge if a full body cast was on your mind.

"Hobbes, are you alright?" grumbled Calvin, wobbling to his feet. Hobbes spat crimson saliva onto the path (which veered right suddenly) and cursed silently. "A little cut in the mouth, but okay nonetheless." He struggled to his feet then uttered a long cat yawn and snapped a crick out of his back.

"Well…we should see what we can salvage from the wreck." uttered Calvin as he peered over the ledge. The twisted frame was half in and half out of the river. Water lapped quickly over the front end, which had been badly shattered.

"How are we going to fix this? Dad doesn't have the tools…" remarked Calvin as he picked up the snapped and twisted back axle, minus one wheel. 

"With money." Calvin frowned at Hobbes suggestion. 

"How, we've got nothing-"

"Oh? What's this then?" Calvin turned to Hobbes who had bent down to pick up a small white envelope that had been in the path.

"What?" gasped Calvin. He had just flown down that path. He would have seen it in spite of him trying not to bust open his skull. There should be a tire track across the front, and yet…and yet there was nothing.

"It says 'Calvin' on the front…looks a little fancy too." Calvin took the envelope from his yellow-ochre buddy and was suddenly hit with a wave of nostalgia. The slopping, backhand handwriting was that he had seen on the Tarot cards the night before. He reluctantly tore his finger across the seal and looked inside. 

Bills. Dozens of bills. All twenty's, unmarked, pressed and steamed. There had to be better than five hundred dollars right in his hands. Calvin was in awe. He could not respond to this. This…this was something else. He took the bills out of the envelope and simply stared at them. Who could have put the envelope right in the middle of the forest like this. Who? There was nobody here. 

As he began to put the bills back in, he saw the tiny note inside. He pulled it out and let his eyes scan over the print. It was the same backslant that read "Two down, two to go. Enjoy your 'wealth' while you can. P.S. Death is coming!" Next to the postscript was the picture of his little friend from the night before. He could almost see the gleam of the sword blade that was stuck into the skeleton's skull. 

Suddenly, Calvin had a feeling. It was a strong feeling, a feeling of paranoia, that they were being watched. Whoever had given him his "wealth" was still watching.

"Hobbes, we have to get out of here." 

"What about the wagon?" 

"We can get a new one. Let's just go." 

Calvin hurriedly pushed Hobbes up the path, and began to pant away. 

Calvin took one last look over his shoulder, and before he reluctantly turned it back, he would swear he had seen a blur of something shiny and pearly white. 

Like a sword that had been jammed into a skull. 


End file.
